: It was the only way to access hardware-accelerated video decoding (UVD) and official CrossFire support.
The release of in late 2012 represented a pivotal, albeit turbulent, moment for Linux enthusiasts using AMD hardware. Central to this experience was the AMD Catalyst driver (fglrx), a proprietary software package that became a symbol of the friction between cutting-edge desktop environments and closed-source driver development. The Shift to Unity and X.Org 1.13 Catalyst Driver Ubuntu 12.10
: Catalyst provided superior 3D performance and better power management for Radeon cards compared to the open-source radeon drivers of that era. : It was the only way to access